Something Blue
by Bad Werewolf
Summary: How did River manage to show up at Amy's wedding, when the Doctor never existed? This is my vague explanation based on the extremely limited information I had available, and my own twisted mind.


**Disclaimer**: Not mine. Never mine.

x x x

**Something Blue**

x x x

The universe had always felt wrong to him.

Since his childhood, there had always been something missing, like the vaguest idea in the back of your mind, a flicker in the corner of your eye that you can't quite catch in plain sight.

It had driven him almost mad.

Almost.

Of course, he didn't have any friends, so maybe that was what he was missing. Maybe it was all psychosomatic for the want of someone else he could confide in.

He had natural talent, however, and while he was reckless the elders did their best to nurture his innate skills and guide him towards greatness. They succeeded. He brought honour and pride to their race, in spite of his most unorthodox methods.

His closest acquaintance- though they were by no means friends- was the dangerous type. She had the tendency to harm that which got in her way, and he was often assigned to clean up after her messes. They tried to redeem her by giving her a mission of vital importance. Destroy the greatest future-enemy of their race before its inception. She succeeded spectacularly.

The Rani assassinated the first Dalek.

She tried to dig into their race's past, dragging up dangerous secrets. He was sent to stop her, and he succeeded. The ancient temples of Rassilion were never tampered with.

Though as he left the temple steps, a distant whisper from within mourned the non-existence of its freedom. He never understood the words, "Enmity of ages."

Of course, playing lackey to the elders did get boring, and after a few centuries he left to explore the galaxy on his own. On a small blue-green planet in the unfashionable western spiral arm of the galaxy, he found people who seemed to understand his reckless side. Something his own race could never fathom. He stuck around.

Some stayed with him for a while. Years, merely a blink of an eye to his lifespan. He never became attached. It was like keeping a pet, they're bound to die before you and then you just go down to the pound and pick up a new one.

Yes, a few local mannerisms might have rubbed off on him.

One thing he discovered quickly wherever a heroic figure of any nature went, from himself in a benevolent mood to the classic white knight (whom he did meet once), trouble undoubtedly followed. It wasn't that he found trouble, _it _found _him_. He soon learned that this didn't happen when he just didn't care. Trouble seemed not to care, either, and life was much easier.

Then he met a special woman from this world. She was lonely, just like him. Just like him, there was a piece of the puzzle absent, something missing in her life that broke the universe just to think of it.

Rose Tyler reminded him of his childhood, and he repaid the favour by showing her the universe. For the first time, he went out of his way to protect another being from their own timeline and destiny. Rose should have died in 2005. Instead, she saw half her planet's history first-hand, and visited far off galaxies from the diamond shores of Midnight to the shining moons of Iago.

It was in the second 'World War' of her own planet that they found another broken point. Something phenomenally powerful had touched that man through time, and it made his skin crawl to look at him. Rose took to him instantly, and he reluctantly consented to allow the man to travel with them.

He wasn't sure why they both left together, just up and disappeared one day, but given the man's nature he chose to believe the obvious. They could at least have said goodbye.

It was a century later, to him, when he met River. She was the third broken point, and he was beginning to feel a pattern. He spent half the time that he travelled with her researching the anomaly.

"What do you think when you're alone?" he asked her, once.

"I've always dreamed of seeing time like this." she admitted distantly, "But it doesn't feel right. Like something's missing."

"Most humans I meet feel that way about a life-partner." he pointed out.

"It's far more than that." she said, sounding sad and distant, "Something brilliant and mad and wonderful that should make this the time of my life... instead of a package tour."

He chuckled, "I'm so sorry I don't meet your high standards, my dear."

She laughed, "Oh you are amazing, but there's still something not quite right. Like..." she hesitated, then pointed accusingly, "I always feel wrong when I see that chameleon circuit work."

"Yes." he deadpanned darkly, "I saw you try to... reprogram it, once. With a mallet."

She didn't look in the least bit apologetic.

"Something has been missing for most of my life." he admitted bluntly. "I've only met one other person who understood."

"Who?" River asked, curious.

"Her name was Rani. She went to school with me. She told me once that there was an empty seat in our classroom. I never saw it, but I always had that same feeling." He looked at her carefully, intently, "Tell me, what do _you _think is missing?"

"A handbrake." She pulled a lever on the console and it began to make an entirely ungodly noise. He stared at her for a moment, that noise ringing through his very soul, and feeling so very right. Then she cleared her throat and added, "It gets too quite in here. Almost silent, sometimes."

He shook his head, thinking back over the many many times in his long life that he had felt out of place.

Silence _did _seem wrong to him, as well.

"What else?" he asked quietly, barely hearing himself over the sound of the TARDIS. Sounding so much more alive than she had ever felt before.

River frowned, "That's not the only way it's too quiet. It's too... _safe_."

He thought about that very carefully. Rose had once said much the same thing. '_What's the point in time-travel if all you do is look? It's like you're not really living, isn't it?_'

"And it's just the two of us here. Why not more?" River continued.

He shrugged, standing up very suddenly, "You want more?" He pulled off the handbrake, and turned a dial to set the controls to find a random time and place, with the only safety requirement he set being breathable air. "Let's see what we find?"

x x x

Nobody noticed a new tree appear silently at the edge of the forest. If anyone was there, they conveniently turned the other way when two people stepped out of a door on the side of the tree.

The woman led the way, taking her companion's hand and all-but dragging him towards the small town nearby.

"Let's not go looking for trouble, River." he protested. He really hated it when random monsters happened to be hiding underground because he was bored and too nosey for his own good. It was getting less and less fun to dispatch them, and he was beginning to run out of creative ways in which to do so.

River simply led him through the streets, staring around in amazement, "It's just like in a history book. Why don't you bring me to Earth more often?" she asked, turning on the spot and staring around her. "I should get a picture of this." she said immediately, taking out her diary.

An odd blue book that she had made herself, in a fit of boredom, one day. Even she couldn't explain why she had decorated it the way she had... but it had always been special to her. Important, even.

But then her eyes rested in the large building to one side of the square. A wedding reception was being held inside, and the young red-haired woman at the table had caught her eye.

"Why do I feel like I should know her?" River asked, frowning slightly.

Her companion stepped up beside her, watching as well, "I don't know. Should you?" he asked enigmatically. There was hope in his continued to stare intently at the other woman.

He watched as well.

The red-haired girl was a focal point in time and space and all of reality. She was brighter than even the damaged goods that he and Rose had found half a century before this time. But it wasn't time or life that shone through her. It was something else.

It was like looking in a mirror and seeing a stranger behind your reflection, when you knew no one was really there.

And then, quite suddenly, it was as if the reflection had taken a shining jewel from his pocket, winked and the weight of the world fell down to him.

As if that stranger in the mirror had whispered the ultimate answer of life the universe and everything in his ear.

He put a hand on River's shoulder, and whispered that same answer to her, "Give her the diary."

River frowned down at her untouched diary. Such love and care put into it, for what? It was never used... and this seemed so much more important.

He watched her walk over to the door, uncertainly. She reluctantly handed the book to a man in a waiter's uniform. Gave him careful instructions. Then she went to the window to ensure the job was done correctly.

He saw the red-haired girl accept the book.

Waited with baited breath.

Every second ticked by slower than the one before it, and he could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, louder and louder with every step that River took away from him.

The red-haired girl stood up... and it felt like a ton of bricks had hit him in the chest. She was talking, her body language told him she was raising her voice. Shouting. Wind was rising up in the room around her.

And his whole world was beginning to fall apart.

Memories of lives and hatred and deaths and love and pain and rage... all came flooding back to him with the echoing, maddening, never-ending drumbeat of his own hearts.

River turned back to look at him, with wide eyes. She felt it too. Time itself was being rewritten.

And she was the last thing that he saw in this life.

He was fading away.

Becoming something _else_.

But the last thing he heard was that stranger- bestfriendlovergreatestenemy.

Whispering in his ear one more time.

"Thank you."

x x x


End file.
